How Frequently Should You Take a Vacation?

I know, you’re busy and you have work to do, but you also need to take some time off to recharge those batteries. So, should you plan one big vacation for the year? Or should you sparse out your days for multiple vacations throughout? Quantity can sometimes beat quality.

First and foremost, regardless of how you use your vacation days, you need to be using them—and soon. The longer you put off your time off, the worse you’re making things for yourself. Not only are you at risk for burnout, one nine-year long study, published in Psychosomatic Medicine, suggests not taking at least one vacation a year may increase your risk of mortality due to cardiovascular disease. So, not only are you killing your joy, you’re possibly killing yourself. Give yourself a break, people.

When you should take those breaks, however, depends on a few factors. How many days you have available to use, what activities bring you joy, whether you have a family or not, and other variables come into play. Because of that, there’s no perfect formula that works for everyone—sorry. But there are still a few things everyone can try to shoot for! We know that in terms of maximizing relaxation, you should aim for vacations that range somewhere between seven and 11 days long . That gives you enough time to let go of your stress at work, completely loosen up, and achieve full-on calm.

That same study, published in the Journal of Happiness Studies, also recommends you space out your vacations evenly instead of using up all of your days at once. Now, eight days might sound like a lot for someone who only gets 10 days of vacation a year, but if you frame your days off with weekends, you can manage two evenly spaced, eight-day vacations a year. If you have 14 days of paid time off, that’s almost three separate eight-day vacations you can use to split your year into thirds. As tempting as it might be to use all your days to take one long “summer break,” your overall goal should be to achieve the perfect balance between quality (length plus joy) and quantity (frequency).

Vacation frequency is also important because planning multiple breaks throughout the year means you always have something to look forward to. Planning things, and the anticipation that comes with that, tends to make us happier . If you only take one long vacation every year, the excitement builds much more slowly and seems so far off it can actually lead to feelings of despair. Also, some studies (like this one, and this one) suggest that pre-vacation stress may be higher in the case of long vacations—since they often require more preparation. Spontaneous vacations or leisure activities can often be more rewarding than trips you meticulously plan out as well, since it’s all play and no work.

The best thing you can do for yourself, researchers suggest, is look at time off from work as a necessary component of a healthy lifestyle:

Asking why we should keep going on vacations is therefore comparable to asking why we should go to sleep considering the fact that we get tired again. A period of effort investment at work should necessarily be alternated with periods of recovery in order to remain healthy in the long run. Therefore, instead of skipping vacations or taking only one long vacation in years, it seems much more reasonable to schedule several shorter vacations across a work year in order to maintain high levels of H&W [happiness and well-being].

The best time to plan a vacation is when you think you’ll need it the most. As you plan out your year, ask yourself, “Where will time off be the most valuable to me?” It may not be in the middle of summertime when everyone else travels, but in the spring, after a stressful winter. Or maybe you think you’ll need a recharge at the end of summer before a busy fall. When will you need stress relief the most? Determine those times first, then try to space out a few quality vacations throughout the year. You’ll be much happier if you do.

7 Comments

I think the only answer is to space it out. Everyone needs a break more than once per year. I once worked for a company that had some stupid requirement that you took two consecutive weeks off once per year. When I only had two weeks of vacation it sucked! I am now lucky enough to work for a company with generous time off benefits. I get 4 weeks off, and the whole company is on break between Christmas and NY, so that is another vacation. I typically take a full week off sometime in the Spring, another full week off in the summer, and then spread the additional days around the year as I see fit. I’ve always taken a full week off at some point in the summer, even when I had far fewer vacation days. I think having a once per year trip to get away somewhere is good for everyone.

Were you in a financial field perhaps? I read something about how 2 week mandatory leaves actually helps a lot to catch corporate fraud. Somebody regularly moving money away stops while they are gone, and the activity shift is noticed.

Yeah, that’s how I am too. I always hoard my PTO days because I might get sick and need them, and then in years when I get lucky (like this year) I end up having to use it all up in the last couple months because it doesn’t roll over. :(

One of the more annoying things is that I take time off... and then what? I have severe depression, so I don’t have anything in the ways of hobbies, interests, or things I would like to do with my short-term freedom. (Not that I have the money to do anything, anyway.) This is part of the reason I haven’t taken more than a four-day weekend in about three years. I had planned for taking most of December off as a “staycation”, where I would actually work Mondays to stay in the loop/play janitor but otherwise would be off. (The last two weeks would be completely work-free due to how the holidays land.) After I had to take an abrupt mental health day on Tuesday, my boss now wants me to take the week of Thanksgiving off, switching for an additional workweek in December, so I have time off sooner. I don’t really like this idea, but I honestly have no idea why. It’s not like the schedule change is going to effect how I use my time off, and it’s probably good to have that small break sooner than try to hold out for a larger one later. The longer you put off your time off, the worse you’re making things for yourself. Also the risk that you lose the PTO, as a lot of companies have policies that PTO “expires” after a year or two (my company just put something in place, sort of: once an employee hits 120 hours, they stop accruing. When this policy went into practice I had 128 hours.)

Last year, I saved it all up, and didn’t bother working November or December (7 weeks paid plus mandatory shutdown over Christmas, yes I know I’m exceptionally lucky). This year, I’ve spread it around, have 9 days left to take. I feel like I want to kill some of my team mates. Next year, I’ve already booked 2 weeks in summer. I’ll probably try to save the rest to prevent genocide.